The Scream team is probably really glad they didn’t actually kill off Gale Weathers in Scream 6. Variety reports this afternoon that Courteney Cox will return for the seventh installment of the franchise, officially making her the sole Scream cast member to appear onscree in all seven films. (Roger L. Jackson, who voices Ghostface, could very well return, but hasn’t been confirmed as of this writing.)
The news comes on the heels of announcements that Mason Gooding would return for Scream 7 as Chad Meeks-Martin after playing the character in Screams 5 and 6. Pitch Perfect alum Anna Camp also joined this new movie, Deadline reported yesterday, and Isabel May will step out of the Duttonverse to join Scream 7 as Sydney Prescott’s daughter. Of course, back in March, the film somehow found the money to bring back Neve Campbell for the new entry. Campbell had rejected starring in Scream 6 after she said the salary she was offered “did not equate to the value I have brought to the franchise.”
Of course, one assumes a big reason they were willing to splurge on Campbell (and most likely on Cox, too) is because of the mess made after firing Melissa Barrera, who was supposed to be the anchor of the rebooted series that began in 2022. Barrera was fired in late 2023 for posting comments critical of Israel’s military action in Gaza. Shortly thereafter, news broke the other series anchor Jenna Ortega would not be returning to the next installment due to her own busy schedule and rising star. The project also lost its director Christopher Landon almost exactly a year ago, who wrote at the time that it was a “dream job that turned into a nightmare.” It sure seemed for a moment that the movie might not happen at all, but Gooding had a more realistic—if uncharacteristically blunt—opinion about the seventh Scream. “If it could make money, I guarantee, they’re making it,” he told Variety in March. With Cox back in the saddle, it seems like there’s a good chance it will!
